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Outcomes in the inter- and intra-personal realms are central to the goals of Jewish education, yet educators often struggle to address them in a meaningful way. In this article, we describe what we learned from facilitating an online community of practice for congregational school leaders and day school educators seeking to enhance their work in promoting social, emotional, and spiritual growth.

Most Jewish religious schools begin the day with a traditional morning prayer. After that, students spend much of their time studying Talmud, the central text of Jewish law. But at Romemu Yeshiva, set to open next year, students could begin the day with yoga and meditation, study Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism, then pore over Hasidic texts that afternoon. And some of those students may not even be Jews. When it begins its classes in the summer of 2019, Romemu Yeshiva will take its place among a constellation of intensive Jewish study programs for adults in New York City. But unlike other yeshivas, such as the Hadar Institute, Romemu will depart from a traditional focus on understanding and analyzing rabbinic texts. Romemu students will study Talmud and Jewish law, but their curriculum will also emphasize concepts like mindfulness, movement and mysticism.

In Jewish schools, where we’re concerned with students’ spiritual growth and want our children developing in emotionally and socially successfully ways, an emphasis on grades can run counter to these religious and psychological goals. After all, is there some tally for how a child has deepened religious practice or grown spiritually? Should there be? And what about the progress a child has made in becoming more organized, collaborating successfully on a project, or learning to manage time and emotions well? The latter skills translate into a productive adulthood, but we don’t often stop to teach them, much less measure them in some quantifiable way. So, these are the limitations of grades: they measure some very precise things that some kids can do very well, but they leave us without information about important types of competencies that students may or may not be developing, because grades generally don’t address religious, social, and emotional growth.

Ayeka: The Center for Soulful Education today announced that it has selected eight schools from a strong application pool of sixteen to participate in a new cohort beginning August 2018 funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation. The schools chosen are Adelson Educational Campus, Carmel Academy, Katz Yeshiva High School, Luria Academy of Brooklyn, Maimonides School, Pressman Academy, Robert M. Beren Academy, and Solomon Schechter of Long Island. Ayeka was one of ten recipients of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Jewish Educator Professional Development Initiative.

How do teachers explain God at all? How do they do so in a Jewish school? The authors in this Passover issue of HAYIDION wrestle with these and other issues, in articles that are sometimes deeply personal and always professionally relevant. We can see clearly how the thought leaders and teachers and heads of school who are featured in these pages have spent many hours pondering, examining, questioning and debating the hows and whys of teaching about God in the classroom. The authors in this issue approach the Big Questions from a wide variety of perspectives and thinkers, but they are united in their concern to bring the God Issue within the classrooms and halls of Jewish day schools.

Therefore, we need a new response as to why Jewish education is important. We need a new vision and to stop “probing our pupiks,” and rationalizing the measure of our Jewishness amidst secular American culture. We need to address the apriori question: Why is Judaism itself important? Why does Judaism exist and what about Judaism defines its core purpose?

Davenspot posted on their blog a Manifesto for Jewish Education, written by Aryeh Ben David of Ayeka: Center for Soulful Education, which was posted on Lookjed and has been generating some constructive conversation. Ben David asserts that our educational goal should be not only to preserve our voices of the past, but to enable and encourage our own authentic voices to be heard and to enable personal and spiritual growth.